The Hobo: The Sociology of the Homeless ManAnderson, Nels
General
The Hobo: The Sociology of the Homeless Man
Anderson, Nels
Chicago (Ill.) -- Social conditions; Tramps
1. _Agriculture or crop moving._--When the crops are ready to be
garnered labor must be imported at any cost. The leading crops
in these seasonal demands are grain harvesting, corn shucking,
fruit picking, potato digging, beet topping, cotton picking,
hop picking, etc. If a man follows the wheat harvest, he may be
occupied from the middle of June when the crop is ready in Oklahoma
until November or December when the season ends with threshing in
North Dakota and Canada. Workers who pick fruit may remain in one
locality and have some kind of fruit always coming on.
2. _Building and construction work._--Next to crop moving the
building trades and construction jobs make the heaviest seasonal
demands upon the labor market. Railroad construction, ditch
digging, and similar occupations are generally discontinued during
the winter. Carpentry, masonry, brick and concrete work are only
carried on with reduced numbers of men through the cold months.
3. _Fishing._--Salmon fishing on the Pacific Coast and oyster
fishing on the Atlantic Coast are also seasonal industries. In the
fishing industry, as in other seasonal occupations, there is a
demand for experienced workers that cannot always be had when most
needed.
4. _Sheep shearing._--Sheep shearing is a skilled trade. Thousands
of men are needed to harvest the wool crop each year and these
men are forced to become migratory. The shearing season, like the
harvest, moves from border to border during a period of three or
four months. In the Southwest the sheep are sometimes clipped twice
a year. The shearing jobs are usually short but lucrative.
5. _Ice harvesting._--Formerly the ice harvest furnished employment
to an army of men for two months or more during the winter.
Ice-manufacturing plants have diminished the demand for natural
ice, though ice cutting still furnishes winter jobs for many men.
6. _Lumbering._--Working in the lumber woods and in the saw mills
is not now so much of a seasonal job as it was when the industry
centered around the Great Lakes. The industry has gone West or
over the border into Canada, where, with the longer winter season
and improved facilities, it operates almost all year. It is not
necessary in Washington, Oregon, and California to wait for the
snow to begin work in the woods as in Michigan and Wisconsin in the
early days.
Certain occupations not essentially seasonal have a tendency to
contribute to migrancy. In many metal mines a man’s health will not
permit him to work long. He leaves and goes into some other mine in
the same or a different district where the danger is not present. A
miner tends to become a migrant for the sake of his health. There
are other industries in which hazards exist that force workers to
become transient.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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